


After the Return

by CarlywithaC



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A Hint of BuckyNat If You Squint I Suppose, ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, But Mostly Hurt, Canon Compliant, Emotional Roller Coaster, Emotions are hard to write, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this before "The Blip" was a thing, It's Hard to Write, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, POV Multiple, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Present Tense, Some of them are a little happy I guess, The Returned Sounds Cooler, but not for long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 20:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18746896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarlywithaC/pseuds/CarlywithaC
Summary: After the battle against Thanos, the Returned try and go back to their lives. Everyone feels different emotions, but no one knows what they are supposed to feel.





	After the Return

**Author's Note:**

> I decided that 'brought back' was kind of a boring way to constantly talk about those who were Snapped and saved, so I call them the Returned, and Bruce's Snap to bring them back- The Return. 
> 
> Sounds cooler.
> 
> I originally intended to do all of the Returned, but didn't want to get any characterization wrong since I'm not as familiar with some of them, so I apologize if your favorite was not included. I did not want to mess anything up.
> 
> Headcanons in the notes below. Otherwise, none of this works.

After the Return, no one truly knows what to feel.

For some of the Returned, every emotion fathomable hits them at once, exhausting them entirely and they can’t even function.

For others, emotions occur in stages. They can begin to rebuild their lives one day, only to crash and burn the next day when a different emotion decides to strike.

Sometimes, a single one lingers until they can’t escape it. It becomes a part of who they are, now that they have come back to a world five years in the future when it felt like maybe five minutes for them. That one, single emotion is what they always go back to, almost finding comfort in it. Like it’s the one thing that they can claim as theirs after everything that has happened to them.

 

~~~

 

After the Return, Laura is concerned.

She is concerned about Clint. She knows what he did during the last five years. He told her, in a moment of honesty shortly after Tony’s memorial as they sat on the porch of their own home, watching their children play. She can see it weighs on his conscience heavily.

She also knows he misses Natasha, and correctly guesses he had offered up his life first in order for her and their children to be saved. Laura doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ok with the fact that he let her go, even more so the fact that Natasha told him to in her very last words to him.

Laura is glad to welcome Wanda into their home, especially after seeing her interact with her children for the first time. She is reminded of Natasha, and can see that Clint is too.

She thinks about her children. Nate is too young to understand, she hopes, at least, but Lila and Cooper are old enough to. She knows their questions are coming, and she doesn’t have answers for them. She has questions of her own. She fears she’ll never get any answers, but at the same time, _maybe she doesn’t want to_.

Her two older children know more of what happened, she can see in their eyes that they understand it more than her youngest son. She sees their scared looks once school starts up again; they won’t know half of the kids in their classes. Their old friends have gotten older and moved on. Kids that were Nate’s age before the Snap have almost caught up to them.

So when Laura watches her family, she feels a pang at everything they have gone through— each being affected in a different way. Clint in the way that he mourned them, and now Natasha once they returned, and she and her children feeling lost. She sees the toll it’s taking on everyone, herself included.

And Laura is concerned.

 

~~~

 

After the Return, Sam is overwhelmed.

Not only at Steve passing him the Shield, no, that is a topic that he can’t even fathom at the moment. And so he doesn’t, though he knows he will need to soon. He keeps the shield hidden in his apartment for now. Only Bucky knows he has it. He doesn’t think about it for now. Not yet. The reason behind the shield stays at the forefront of his mind though. Just why Steve would trust him with it, well, he isn’t sure. But when he is ready, he’ll do his damn best to make Cap proud.

He is overwhelmed by the number of people coming to him for help.

Without Steve and Natasha, his two main support pillars before the Snap, he isn’t sure how much he even can help. Especially when he’s one of the people who needs help himself. But he still starts a support group specifically for the Returned, which unfortunately backfires when the auditorium is packed and no one really gets to speak their mind in a cathartic way the first meeting. Peter helps him set up a website and online forum that serves as a better platform for now, but Sam thinks that it might even be better than actual meetings. People can start small, and work their way to face-to-face interaction.

Sam still can’t believe the scale of the Snap and subsequent Return. Since meeting Steve all those years ago, he is used to more focused, isolated incidents such as the battle at the airport in Germany. But for the world, no, the _universe_ to have gone through this, he still can’t wrap his head around it and isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to.

That is when he starts to think, to really think of how many people, beings, life, whatever, the Snap and Return affected. Because it wasn’t only the Returned, it was those who were spared as well.

And Sam is overwhelmed.

 

~~~

 

After the Return, Bucky is lost.

Yet again, he had lost time. Granted, five years was nothing compared to what he went through with Hydra. Especially when it only felt like minutes at most for him.

However, he is left to deal with his inner demons without his best friend. He does his best to understand why Steve made the choice to go back to be with Peggy, and he is happy his friend had the life he wanted. Sure, Bucky was aware of Steve’s plan. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. He lies awake at night, at an apartment he and Sam managed to get together, focused on the fact that he lost one of the only links to his past. He still struggles with it, but he believes he is getting better. Or moving on, at least.

Once he had heard that Natasha had sacrificed herself, he felt a little more disconnected. He thought about it for hours, but he couldn’t seem to figure out why he did when he only knew her, more like knew of her, for just two years.

He considers seeing if he can return to Wakanda for a while. He likes to think he’d be welcome still. It has been the most familiarity with a place he’s had since he was reunited with Steve that could even begin to feel like a home. He could go back to his little hut on the outskirts of the village. Maybe check on his goats. It sounds silly, but he misses his goats. Something, _someone_ , under his sole care, trusting him completely with their well-being. He wonders if any of them are part of the Returned.

Regardless of what he is told over and over again, he still feels that he has no real place in this world. His only connections to the past he remembers are gone. He does find solace in the fact that he has a new group of people feeling things similar to him. But he still feels like he doesn’t fit in with them.

And Bucky is lost.

 

~~~

 

After the return, Wanda is sad.

She had just watched Vision die. _Twice_. Once at her hand and once at Thanos’. She is glad to at least have gotten the satisfaction of confronting Thanos in the battle. But that didn’t change the fact that the one she had loved so dearly was gone. And in being killed before Thanos snapped his fingers, gone for good.

She goes to stay with Clint and his family for a while. The Avengers compound had been her home since the day her city was in the air.

She hates feeling useless, so she helps out with the kids and chores. Anything to keep from sitting still. If she is still, then she could think. And she isn’t a fan of thinking right now.

So she helps. She takes care of the kids when Clint and Laura go out. She helps do dishes after family meals. And she is the best cook in the house.

She uses her powers as much as she can now, no longer afraid of them now that she has full control. Even for something as simple as retrieving a book from a shelf, there is a red energy surrounding it and bringing it to her spot on a chair by the window. The kids love it. Clint is glad to see her so sure of herself, when she once saw herself as a danger to everyone around her.

Though she finds her thoughts, on occasion, going back to that sunny day in Wakanda where she was destroying the Mind Stone with one hand and holding off Thanos with the other. A tear will fall from her eye, but she’ll smile if she’s in front of the kids, saying it must be the dust or something or other. She thinks of Vision and the peaceful time they shared after the Avengers disbanded but before the fight that took him from her.

And Wanda is sad.

 

~~~

 

After the Return, Peter is dazed.

He was in a fog when May wrapped her arms around him for the first time in five years for her, though in his mind he had seen her just hours prior as he bounded out the door for the field trip. She babbles on and on about how she missed him and is so glad he’s all right now, but he barely hears it. The picture of Mr. Stark—Tony—still fresh in his mind.

With the death of Mr. Stark weighing on him, a secret he must keep to himself save for Aunt May and Ned, he feels like he’s not really there. Just floating along as time passes him by. He’s a shell of the lively, upbeat person he once was.

Half of the kids in the class had graduated. In a strange way, he was glad that his friends—Ned, MJ, even Flash, had also been victims. He needs some familiarity in his life. And even his bully from school has become a comfort for him.

He is used to saving people, not being one of the saved. He doesn’t like being a victim, even if he helped save the world, and entire universe, once he was saved himself.

Ned would tell him to call themselves the Returned, not victims. “It just sounds so cool! Not just the ‘guy in the chair’ anymore, no sir. I am one of the _Returned_. And especially you! The Return of the Spider-Man,” he’d say and Peter would smile at his friend. Ned could tell there was nothing behind it though. Peter would, however, remind Ned that there was no ‘the’ in his superhero name, just to get a smile back from him.

But when he passes by an Iron Man tribute while walking home from school, or sees a new article online about the Return, he goes into that same fog again. He goes back to that same headspace he was in at the memorial, sitting in complete disbelief at everything.

And Peter is dazed.

 

~~~

 

For those who end up stuck on one single emotion, they call it theirs. In a world where they once had everything, their thoughts and feelings are all they truly own now. Many try to push it away, to allow themselves to feel something else, but they always return to it at the end of the day when they are too tired to fight. 

It is inevitable.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanons for this to work, that will more than likely be changed by FFH/the upcoming shows.
> 
> 1) Old!Steve time-jumped over from his new timeline. He’s not ‘in’ the current timeline we watched in the movie. Or maybe, he’s just not there. Whatever thoughts you like to think, there’s no Steve anymore past that scene. Sorry.  
> 2) Vision is dead. Like dead-dead. I know that’s possibly changing with the Wanda/Vision (whatever it’s going to be called, I’m not sure. I’m not sure what they’re even doing with it, to be honest) show.  
> 3) I don’t know how long in the MCU timeline it is between Endgame and FFH/the upcoming shows, but I can definitely see a recovery period before anything goes back to even a new normal.
> 
> Also, it’s hard to write in present tense.


End file.
